[u][url=http://www.railwaysafrica.com/blog/2013/08/s-a-railway-calendar/?utm_source=Railways+Africa&utm_campaign=00998eab85-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_a785c99d84-00998eab85-365280789][color=#4040FF]Railways Africa[/color][/url][/u] wrote:The 2014 South African railway calendar is better than ever. Chris Janisch and Nathan Berelowitz have done a great job putting together a unique collection of steam, electric and diesel photos – many we’ve not seen before – based this year on the theme Named Trains.
Individualism and competitiveness, evidenced by striking paint schemes and eye-catching advertising, characterised the British railway scene from its early days in the nineteenth century. It typified the enterprise – and rivalry – of the separately owned private companies that ran the trains. Almost from the beginning, they allocated names to their principal expresses. The success of this strategy, abetted by clever marketing and first-rate publicity, was such that titles like The Flying Scotsman quickly became household words. The idea caught on quickly around the world. In due course the 20th Century Limited came to epitomise North America; the mysterious Orient Express, beloved of thriller writers, personified the link from Western Europe to Istanbul and the east.
In South Africa, named trains were the exception until the mid-twentieth century. Prior to World War II of course we did have the premier Union Limited and Union Express (both in fact the same train, depending on whether Cape Town or Johannesburg was the destination). Known after the war as the Blue Train, it was joined in 1947 by the Orange Express.
With the arrival of new Blue Train sets in 1972, the existing rolling stock, now in green livery, was renamed Drakensberg. By then, the Johannesburg-Durban and Johannesburg-Cape Town conventional intercity trains had been using the names Trans-Natal and Trans-Karoo for a decade or more. These expresses all carried headboards on the front of the locomotive, as did the state president’s White Train.
Later, a number of ordinary intercity expresses in the country gained names, such as the Algoa (Johannesburg to Port Elizabeth), Amatola (East London) and Komati (Komatipoort). Passenger runs on the narrow gauge out of Port Elizabeth became known as the Apple Express.
A fast multiple-unit electric set linking Pretoria and Johannesburg early in the eighties carried the headboard Jacaranda Express. The purpose-built Metroblitz superseded it in 1984. A distant relation in the south, Metrorail’s Cape Town-Worcester outer suburban working is still known as the Boland Blits.
Many of these distinctive trains feature in the new calendar, though sadly the intercity expresses – except for the Blue Train – are no longer labelled. The pictures are the work of familiar- name, top-notch photographers like Charlie Lewis, Peter Stow, Les Pivnic, Eugene Armer, Jean Dulez and David Rodgers.
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R70 in South Africa postage included
